


She Will Be Your Living End

by Not So (Silberias)



Series: The Lady from Another Grinning Soul [1]
Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 05:44:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1417255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Not%20So
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only Borgias could love Borgias not because the world hated them but because only a Borgia understood the depth of devotion required to do it properly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Will Be Your Living End

**Author's Note:**

> Hmmm...because the only time any of the Borgias are truly happy is when they are indulging one another in some fashion. And it explains why Lucrezia is left wanting by all her lovers save Paolo, because she is used to complete and unquestioning devotion. It also explains her tears and unhappiness when Cesare takes time to work up the bravery to once again give her everything she asks of him.
> 
> Title taken from the Bowie song "Lady Grinning Soul," because it is basically completely fitting.

Just after Lucrezia saved her small family from Naples’ grasping fingers, her husband came to Cesare full of troubles. The young man had been what Lucrezia had wanted, once upon a time, and so Cesare heard him out. Never mind that Lucrezia had been stealing kisses from him just that morning after breakfast while their mother pretended she was sewing so loudly she could not hear their joyous giggling or the smack of lips. Or that Cesare was seriously thinking of taking his father up on the suggestion that he claim that Giovanni was his, Cesare’s, son by a Roman whore whom his sister took pity on—and that Lucrezia’s only objection was that then the effort of making the babe was stolen from her.

“How does one love a Borgia?” in Alfonso’s tone, Cesare detected the bitterness that came with someone not quite loyal enough. It was the bitterness that had only _ever_ laced Juan’s voice when speaking of Lucrezia’s baby, but it was the bitterness that had written Juan’s end for him nonetheless.

“How does one love God?” he answered. He tried to inject some sentiment of jest into his tone, but the force he had to put into the display showed in Alfonso’s nervous flutter of hands. Cesare had never seen more evidence of supposed feminine traits than he had in his brother-in-law. Women did not flutter their hands, nor their eyelashes, nor put on tremulous twitches of smiles. He had been surrounded by women of all shapes and classes and education and such things they did not do.

“You Borgias are not God, no matter that you put a Pope on the throne,” was Alfonso’s acid reply, the acid eating down into the grave he was digging himself. Once dug, all Cesare had to do was wait to put him in it at Lucrezia's order.

“Always with the ‘you Borgias,’ it seems that we are never seen as a family only as a pack of dogs. Well, dear brother, I shall attempt to help you in loving your wife,” he murmured as he stood, stalking over to where Alfonso fiddled with the draw string on the curtains, “You love a Borgia by indulgence. We crave someone to indulge us in our pretty fancies and whims. After the election of Pope Innocent, the Holy Father returned from conclave with the idea that the white of doves shows the peace a cardinal’s blood brings and my mother ordered a dovecote built in her palace. Within the year it was I, not my father, who cared for the doves but their presence brought my brother Gioffre into the world such was the Holy Father's gratitude.”

“I am to give your sister every pretty thing she wishes for? That would bankrupt a nation!” Finally Alfonso stopped with his restless fidgeting and alarmingly put his hand on the hilt of his sword, the other hand flat across his belly. Oh how Cesare wanted to open up this poor imitation of a lover his sister claimed as husband.

“Not every pretty thing, no, but every pretty word from her mouth should be adored as much as her body and the power her marriage brings to you. If my sister flies from another room into your arms declaring you her dearest love, you smile and hold her. Kiss her, take her to bed—even if that morning she accused you of possessing no love in your heart for her or her family. If you fail to indulge her, she _will_ grow bored of you.”

“And if I do not?” Alfonso’s fingers tightened around the blade at his side. Cesare gripped the man’s wrist and squeezed, tighter and tighter until the fingers loosened and dropped away—but still Cesare’s fingers were a vice around Alfonso’s wrist as he spoke. The boy-husband's skin would surely bruise, but Cesare failed to care.

“Then I shall hear of it, and believe me you do not want to bring shame or sadness to my baby sister.”

Months later his dearest sister told him the words he’d been expecting since that conversation—“I’m bored of my husband,” which was not in and of itself fatal to Alfonso but her next statement was fatal indeed, “I’m bored of life.” Life always held the most excitement for a Borgia, because life had an endless list of possibilities, and Alfonso had somehow killed that excitement. Cesare did not need the absolution and forgiveness of her words that he never tired her. He, who as much as he would let himself, had indulged her every fancy, whim, fantasy, and wish for a lifetime. She was right, he knew as she spoke of curses and goodness and God, that only a Borgia could ever truly love a Borgia.

His sister had one last fancy for her husband to give her—and that was for him to disappear. If only the siege at Forli did not call, he would have given his dear sister her wish that very night. Her wish would keep until he returned, he knew it in his bones. If her boredom with Alfonso was cured before his return, so much the better for the quibbling Duke of Bisceglie. He would not kill the husband his sister adored, only the one she tired of.

**Author's Note:**

> And Francois Arnaud is super yummy looking in long curly hair and face scruff.


End file.
